ABSTRACT
This chapter examines early nineteenth century colonial legal engagement with Indian tradition by examining sentencing in the Nizamut Adawlut (Bengal Criminal Court) of assistants in the suicide of widows and of leprosy affected people. Such suicides, typically by burning or burial alive, were often juxtaposed in British legal and parliamentary debates as having equivalent precedent in Hindu tradition. The sentencing in such cases gives a unique insight into the complex working of Islamic, Hindu and British legal concepts in the formation of early colonial practices of criminal law. The Judges of the Nizamut Adawlut used sentencing to stratify Indian legal tradition on religious lines. At the same time, the health, age and gender of the person seeking suicide contributed to differential approaches to sentencing assistants at their suicides. Those who assisted a younger, healthy woman to die were sentenced more severely than those assisting an aged and infirm leprosy sufferer. British concepts of somatic value and religious identity contributed to the colonial practice of criminal law and engagement with both Islamic and Hindu legal tradition.
